Never Back Down ((BETTER))
Max Cooperman, after befriending Jake, introduces him to MMA and gets him connected with an instructor named Jean Roqua. Jake manages to pass a few of Roqua's physical tests and impresses him with his willpower and is accepted as his student. Roqua warns Jake that while he is under his instructorship, Jake cannot fight outside the gym no matter the reason and if he breaks the rule he will be thrown out of his gym. While Jake trains under Roqua, he initially has difficulty doing so due to his anger towards his incident with Ryan. Baja tries to make amends with Jake by apologizing for her role in the fight between him and Ryan but Jake refuses to forgive her. When Ryan shows no remorse for his fight with Jake or his sadistic tendencies, Baja breaks up with him, to which Ryan responds by aggressively grabbing her. When Jake tries to intervene to protect Baja, Ryan insults him about his father again and leaves. At practice, with Jake still furious over what happened, is told by Roqua to leave the gym until he cools off. Riding back from the gym with Max, Jake gets into a road rage brawl with a group of men whom he easily dispose of. Max films the video, which circulates around the school and raises Jake's social status which ends up agitating Ryan enough to confront Jake. After cornering Jake in the bathroom and roughing him up, he challenges Jake to compete in the Beatdown, an underground fighting tournament of which Ryan is the reigning champion. When Roqua discovers that Jake has fought outside the gym, he kicks him out and tells him he is not welcome back. A little while later, after Jake pleads with him, Roqua obliges and welcomes Jake back to the gym. Roqua puts Jake through more rigorous training which Jake uses in preparation for the Beatdown. After a workout, Roqua confides in Jake that he came from Brazil and is in self imposed exile. He tells Jake that his brother was a skilled MMA fighter and had handily beaten a local troublemaker who had challenged him. The man later returned with a gun and murdered his brother. Jean's father blames him for the death, saying he should have been watching out for him. Jake later on meets with Baja and apologizes for not forgiving her and they start a relationship. Jake eventually becomes reluctant to compete at the Beatdown seeing it as something Ryan wants, but his mind is changed after Ryan invites Max to his house and assaults him, leaving him on Jake's doorstep to be found. After leaving Max at the hospital, Jake goes to see Roqua and initially arguing over Jake's decision to participate in the Beatdown eventually relents and reminds Jake to "control the outcome".
Never Back Down
Jake arrives at the tournament and both he and Ryan make their way through each round, each emerging victorious. Jake makes it to the semifinals in spite of an injury he received in the previous match. Baja arrives to not only support him, but to tell him that she understands why he insists on fighting: so that he would never have to fight again. After learning that Ryan was disqualified in his semifinal match due to an illegal eye gouge, Jake forfeits, seeing no reason to continue. While he and Baja attempt to leave, Ryan confronts him and the two finally fight outside in the parking lot. Jake is still limited by his injury, and Ryan at first gains the upper hand, applying a choke on Jake. However Jake escapes and knocks out Ryan using one of the first combinations Roqua taught him. Eventually, Jake wins the respect of his fellow students, including Ryan; and Roqua decides to go back to Brazil to reconcile with his father.
Movie historian Leonard Maltin cited the picture as "...wildly improbable and cliched, yet entertaining -- especially for fans of this genre. Cam Gigandet can glare with the best of them...All in all, the film Showdown tried to be".[8]
A 2011 sequel titled Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown was released with Evan Peters reprising his role as Max Cooperman. Directed by Michael Jai White in his directorial debut, the film stars White alongside Alex Meraz, Jillian Murray, MMA fighters Todd Duffee, Lyoto Machida, Scott Epstein and Australian actor-singer Dean Geyer.[11]
Fight movies have their place in cinematic history (Rocky, anyone?); done right, they manage to capture the humanity in the brutality and the poetry in the punch, but NEVER BACK DOWN doesn't. The cuts are so quick that you can't appreciate any technique. And though, like better sports films, the film does attempt to reveal the internal struggles that fuel the physical ones, it does so with overly broad strokes. There's little nuance or complication and so many fight scenes that when the movie finally gets to the big beat down, it's almost anti-climactic -- it just feels like yet another battle. The movie's also riddled with cliches; there's a supportive girlfriend, a funny sidekick, mantras ("Control the outcome"), and even a race between the mentor and the mentee that's a straight rip-off of Rocky.
Jake (Sean Faris) is the new guy at some Orlando public school (he's a lapsed quarterback from Iowa). Since his dad died in a car accident, he's been moody, petulant, and arrest-prone. Video of his famous "Friday Night Lights"-style gridiron brawl has been virally spread all over his new school, where the kids now check him out in the halls.
The next hour and a half is spent getting Jake in shape for the Beatdown, the movie's climactic fight that doubles as a guerilla social event. His Mr. Miyagi is none other than Djimon Hounsou, playing a Senegalese mixed-martial-arts expert named Jean Roqua. Roqua has had tragedy in his life, too. But for reasons that make no sense, he more or less elects Jake as star pupil. The kid insults the instructor. He breaks all his rules, forcing Roqua to go all Djimon Hounsou on him (the hoarse screaming, the glassy eyes). Then they heal. He's actually less Pat Morita and more Barbra Streisand in "The Prince of Tides."
Late 2000s douchebro The Karate Kid with a terrible script and an even worse soundtrack. I can't even imagine how many Chads, Kyles and Troys signed up to train MMA after watching this, just so they could purposely get into late-night fights at bars/clubs/Pizza Pizzas downtown to show their friends how much of a "badass" they are. a star for the decent enough MMA fighting sequences and of course, one star for my boy Djimon Hounsou because he's always great. It was trashy and exploitative enough to keep my interest again this time around but I don't think I'll be going back to it anytime soon. It fucking wreaks of 2008 and of Amber Turd's shit-stained former movie career.
Yeah, this is just the "Karate Kid" of that generation basically.New, troubled kid moves into a new town, new school, meets a beautiful girl who has a bully boy friend who beats his ass. It's all there. Picking yourself up, find a mentor, train hard, come back strong. And I love it, I'm a sucker for these types of movies and the original "Karate Kid" was one of my favorites growing up, and I would've been as much of a fan boy over "Never Back Down" if this were my generation.So obviously as previously stated, it borrows a lot from that '80s classic, and many movies did, but still, I found this one to be the most succesful at it. A highly likeable cast, exciting fight scenes with adequate choreography,...loved it!
The Never Back Down franchise has grown into a beloved martial arts movie series, but how do the movies rank? With the popularity of MMA, the Never Back Down franchise first kicked off in 2008, but while the original has its virtues, particularly in Djimon Hounsou's MMA mentor performance, it didn't really set the cinema screens on fire at the time. Since then, the Never Back Down series has followed a similar path as the Undisputed franchise in really breaking out with its straight-to-video sequel Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown under the direction of Michael Jai White.
True to its title, the Never Back Down franchise is an energized MMA series that's always ready for the next Beatdown, as its grand competition of fighters is dubbed. Grabbing some real-life MMA fighters for cameos and supporting roles along the way, the franchise knows what its audience is hungry for, and has only gotten better and better at delivering it to them. Revolt also sets up the martial arts movie franchise to continue down a new road in Never Back Down 5, with the series having the freedom now to jump into more life-and-death stories with its MMA foundation always at its core. Here's how the Never Back Down series ranks, from worst to best.
In the '90s, "straight-to-video sequel" might've been a term synonymous with "kiss of death." By 2011 however, at least when it comes to action movies, such a transition had begun to look more like an upgrade, and Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown, the directorial debut of martial arts movie veteran Michael Jai White, is certainly a shining example of that. The Beatdown focuses on four young men, respectively portrayed by Dean Geyer, Alexa Meraz, and real-life MMA fighters Todd Duffee and Scott Epstein (their fellow MMA fighter Lyoto Machida also drops in for a cameo), training under the tutelage of former MMA champ Case Walker, played by White, who also made his directorial debut with the film. The returning Evan Peters sets up connective tissue with the first movie as the always energetic Max, while the film fully invests the viewer in the each of the four main students' stories. Case's own history is also a central pillar to the film as both a one-time rising star in the MMA world and a former prisoner trying to follow the rules of his parole. While details of his past are kept more in the background, the film makes clear that his main goal is simply to start his life over, his efforts regularly exploited by some racist cops.
In both its training and fight sequences, The Beatdown fully surpasses its predecessor. Case specifically constructs each student's training around their weak points, and his instruction to Dean Geyer's Mike Stokes to punch a sheet of paper until he can puncture it with his knuckles is an ongoing challenge that the film pays off marvelously at the end. The action scenes, orchestrated by Larnell Stovall, are also outstanding, especially when the Beatdown finally arrives and the knowledge each of Case's students has gained comes into play. Though primarily a mentor, Case doesn't sit on the sidelines either, seen in a set-piece right out of a Jackie Chan movie with Case fighting off the aforementioned bad cops with both hands cuffed after being framed for a parole violation. Not unlike White's earlier involvement in Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown is the point where the MMA-centric franchise really took off, also establishing a new training montage classic with For The Taking's "Time Is Running Out" along the way in its stand-out pre-Beatdown montage. 041b061a72